HOME PAGE

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

African American Consumerism

From the Washington Informer, "Big Spenders, Small Investors: Blacks Have Little to Show for Hard-Earned Dollars," by Stacy M. Brown, on 18 September 2013 -- If black America counted as an independent country, its wealth would rank 11th in the world.

However, African Americans continue to squander their vast spending power, relegating blacks to economic slavery instead of financial freedom, according to several consumer reports detailing the use of cash in the black community.

“There is no way we should have to beg for anything with all of the resources we enjoy,” said journalist, A. Peter Bailey, a Northwest Washington D.C., resident, former Ebony magazine editor, and author of, “Witnessing Brother Malcolm X: The Master Teacher.”

“It’s unthinkable today that we would find ourselves going hat-in-hand to anyone,” said Bailey, 75.

African Americans consistently outpace the total market population in overall growth, smart phone ownership, television viewing and annual shopping trips according to the new study, “Resilient, Receptive and Relevant: The African-American Consumer 2013 Report,” a collaborative effort by the Nielsen Company in New York and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), located in Northwest Washington, D.C.

The report, which will be released on Thursday, Sept. 19, reveals that black buying power continues to increase, rising from its current $1 trillion level to a forecasted $1.3 trillion by 2017.

Despite the strong economic outlook, blacks continue to spend most of their money outside of the African-American community and, according to Nielsen and NNPA, advertisers have repeatedly slighted the black media, spending only three percent, or $2.24 billion, of the $75 billion spent with all media last year.

“No one is going to do anything for us. However, we can flex our economic power, but we have to stop being selfish and pool our resources in order to do so,” Bailey said. The Malcolm X disciple and former Howard University student said blacks should learn from the famous Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that followed Rosa Parks’ arrest when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.

From Dec. 5, 1955 to Dec. 20, 1956, blacks boycotted Montgomery buses in the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the country. The boycott also catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into the role of the country’s civil rights leader.

The 381-day boycott resulted in the local bus company losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue as the 17,000 African Americans in the community comprising more than 90 percent of its ridership refused to patronize the bus system. “Instead, black people took taxis, walked or even rode horses and the company lost money,” Bailey said.

King understood better than anyone that civil rights included economic rights, said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), dean of the Congressional Black Caucus who’s now in his 25th term in Congress, the only member ever endorsed by King.

“We can never truly form a more perfect union until income, wealth and opportunity are made more equal,” said Conyers, 84.

Statistics compiled by several organizations reveal that the purchasing power of blacks continues to be evident in so many ways.

Each year, African Americans spend more than $47 billion on Lincoln automobiles, $3.7 billion on alcohol, $2.5 billion on Toyotas, $2 billion on athletic shoes, and $600 million each year on McDonald’s and other fast foods, according to Target Market News Inc., a Chicago-based marketing research group.

Blacks also spend wildly to keep up their appearances.

The black hair care and cosmetics industry counts as a $9 billion a year business, but while African Americans are spending the most, they are profiting the least, said officials from the Black Owned Beauty Supply Association (BOBSA) in Palo Alto, Calif.

Beauty product lines designed for African Americans were once 100 percent owned and operated by blacks, today other ethnic groups control more than 70 percent of the market, a BOBSA spokesperson said.

Another report, released in May, titled, “The African American Financial Experience,” revealed that blacks have been hurt to a greater degree than any other group during the Great Recession.

The study, produced by the Prudential Company in Newark, N.J., noted that blacks were more likely to lose jobs and to own homes with appraised values that had fallen below what was owed on the mortgage.

“When most black people buy homes, we hurt ourselves economically,” said Dorothy A. Brown, professor at law at Emory University in Atlanta and a former special assistant to the Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Southwest Washington, D.C.

Home ownership has been an important vehicle in creating a solid white middle class, but it has not done the same for most black homeowners, said Brown, 53.

Officials at the Brookings Institution in Northwest Washington, D.C., said poorer white neighborhoods had more home value per income than poorer minority neighborhoods and, even when homeowners had similar incomes, black-owned homes were valued at 18 percent less than white-owned homes.

The current homeownership rate reveals that 73.5 percent of whites own homes while approximately 43.9 percent of African Americans are homeowners, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies State of the Nation report for 2013.

“The recent crash and subsequent rebounding of the market, fiscal cliff jitters notwithstanding, show the white median net worth is down by only 16 percent while the black median net worth is down by 50 percent,” Brown said. “This is because the stock market has significantly rebounded and compensated whites’ losses in home equity, but blacks, without comparable stock investments, have not benefited.”

The Brookings study also revealed that, while many whites are comfortable investing in the stock market, most blacks are not.

Sixty percent of African Americans have less than $50,000 saved in company retirement plans and only 23 percent have more than $100,000.

The loyalty blacks have to their church also has proven costly, said officials at Faith Communities Today, a nonprofit based in Hartford, Conn.

A 2013 study revealed that black churches have collected more than $420 billion in tithes and donations nationwide since 1980, an average of $252 million a week.

“What people fail to see and understand is that, the church pastors aren’t waiting for miracles to fund their lifestyles, they don’t have to pray, day in and day out, to make their ends meet,” said Northwest resident and author, Byron Woulard.

4 comments:

When I first read about the Black church collecting $420 billion, I tried to verify the claim. This is what I found: http://bekitembasgut.blogspot.com/2013/05/internet-journalism-and-black-churchs.html

In an essay entitled, " Father Butcher , " one of Columbia, South Carolina's activist and artist, Wendy Brinker is pens a wel...

Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

In the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored part of their history - Candombe and resistance.

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero